Rumplestiltskin's dagger from Once upon a Time

So, I was given an opportunity to use a Haas mini mill earlier this week, and I didn't really have anything ready to be machined. So, I decided I'd use the opportunity to replicate one of the props I recently stumbled upon, and that's Rumplestiltskin's dagger from once upon a time. I was quite surprised that no one produces a replica of this until I started the project.

So, I got to work on a model, and given that the propmakers cheated (probably at the request of the director) and made 2 separate daggers (one with the name on one side of the dagger, and one with the name on the other) depending on whether the dagger is being held in the left or right hand, I went ahead and also cheated, putting both "front" sides on the same dagger. Given the tools we had and the time constraints, this was really a good decision. IF (and that's a biiiiig IF) I ever made more, I'd put the correct design on the back, but given that I has such a limited amount of time and really, this will be sitting on a shelf 99.9% of the time (With only 1 side visible) I decided 2 front sides was the best way to go.

So, here's some pictures of the project. I went with 35.5cm for the length of the blade, as was reported in another thread here.



















As it sits, I'm trying to come up with proper references for a handle. I'm not sure I really want to tackle that as a 3d model (though I would love being able to get a full grip/crossguard/pommel printed via shapeways) since there is absolutely no pattern to it at all. I'm thinking about hiring someone to sculpt it (no idea where to start there either) but I don't have enough references to do that yet.

The coloring of the letters isn't final yet (not by a long shot) and I may take the polish to a finer finish.

Anyway, thanks for looking.

Wow, that looks amazing!

Love this!

oh wow, I thought this was a dead thread. I'm still trying to find someone to do the grip, but it's a slow go. I need a good stockpile of 1080p screencaps before I can approach someone, and then they're probably going to want me to send the blade, which is gonna be tough for me to do. Well, tough for me to want to do.

This looks really good, i have been hoping someone would make this after the other thread went dead.
i would certainly have one if you make more, i wouldn't be too bothered about having the rear different as it would be on display, excellent work.

+1 here!

Looks very good to me.

Looks great! Fantastic job!
BTW, is there a reason your dagger reads RUMPLESTILTSKIN and the original dagger reads RUMPELSTILTSKIN ?

Damezz said:

Looks great! Fantastic job!
BTW, is there a reason your dagger reads RUMPLESTILTSKIN and the original dagger reads RUMPELSTILTSKIN ?

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The comparison photo I put up, ISNT from the show I don't think, looking at screen caps it is spelt RUMPLESTILTSKIN.

But it the character is RUMPELSTILTSKIN I believe?.....strange.

I also think the comparison photo is wrong and not from the show, as he is called RUMPLESTILTSKIN in the show...these are other pictures, so the dagger AlexGordon made is correct ...the comparison photo confused me.

as was mentioned, mine is spelled correctly to the prop in the show. I'd love to make more of these, but as I mentioned to a person that requested one via pm, there are several things preventing me from making more. First and foremost, I don't have a proper handle. I'd need to find someone who is able to make the proper handle and allow me to make a mold and cast it as many times as I needed.

Second, I don't yet own a machine capable of producing these (probably won't for another year or two until I have space for one) so I'd need to have them produced at an actual shop. I was only able to make this one because it was christmas break and no one was using the shop at a friend's university. The inaccuracies could easily be corrected for a production run. I'd model the backside properly since I now am not on a deadline for when the machine had to be fired up (I made the model in about 16 hours). I didn't have time to do a whole new set of embossing on the back, so I just flipped around the letters and re-scaled them the best that I could since it's known that both daggers exist. The blackened side of the dagger is accurate, but the reverse side is not, even if you assume the accuracy comes from the opposite sided dagger.

I'd also have the shop make a proper set of soft jaws that allowed the dagger to be fully cut out on the mill, and also have them put the edge on with the machine rather than me trying to do it by hand. It's not that hard to edge it with the right sander, but I don't have room for the right kind of sander, so I did the best I could with the small one I have now. I'd also have the engraving bottom be more clean and put a much smoother surface finish on so that far less polishing would be needed.

even if you assume everything goes perfectly and the shop orders all of the perfect tools for the job, it would still probably take 12+ hours per blade, which adds up quick. People have mentioned casting, but the problem with casting is you are either paying through the nose or you are left with a lot of cleanup. Then, if you drop the thing wrong on a wood floor, it could snap, because cast aluminum is very brittle.

I'm in the middle of a semester at school right now, leaving very little time for projects, which means I have to spend my time on the ones that don't require any of this kind of research. I'm really very interested in making more of these, but I don't have the time to go around hunting for a sculptor. Once I find one, I have to worry about how much over the top they are going to charge me for the rights to make a mold, and then I have to cross my fingers that they don't want a dagger blade in exchange for their services. They can't have my original, and as I mentioned before, being able to produce the handles myself is only half of the equation. Outsourcing these to another shop probably means a minimum order of 20, and that's if the cost is still high per unit.

Another problem finding a sculptor, as I mentioned before, is that I have to go through and take as many 1080p screen caps as I can. That means first of all figuring out which episodes the dagger appears in, then finding those episodes in 1080p, then screen capping every frame that I can that shows the handle, and finally, sorting through the screen caps to make sure I don't include any pictures of the different versions of the prop. I've seen handles that still have mold seams on them, backwards handles for the backwards blades... It's a lot of work to organize a run, and when this thread went with no replies, I figured that was that and I didn't have to think about making more.

I hope that all makes sense guys. Oh yeah, and the reason I'm pushing for a sculpted handle instead of a 3d modeled one is how complicated the handle itself is. I'm a very experienced 3d modeler. This dagger is just the tip of the iceburg compared to the things I've modeled. Even with all of that experience, I wouldn't even want to attempt to model this using conventional methods. Nothing about the handle has any sort of a repeatable pattern to it, so it's virtually impossible unless you use a sculpt based software rather than a typical sketch/sweep/extrude software (like solidworks, inventor, etc). I'd love to upload a model to shapeways for it, but there's just too many places that would be far to difficult to model, and it's just not worth 200-300 hours figuring out how to model all of this asymmetrical, patternless topography.

Totally understand your situation and i do hope you make more of these, i would certainly be interested. Keep this thread updated when anything happens so we can see any progress, that way if you ever do decide to do a run we will all know.

Do you have any idea on what kind of price these would cost to produce, with or without the handle?

I honestly don't know. It depends how low a shop would be able to get the hours spent on the machine. It took us 18 hours for the first one. While we could definitely get the time down with a few better tools, a production run would also have more details done by the machine itself. The number that keeps popping into my head is $500/ dagger, but I really don't have any evidence to back that up. I'm just pulling that from what I would pay if this was one of my absolute holy grail props. If it takes 18 hours to machine each dagger, I expect the cost would be higher, since that's $27 per hour, and I've never known a shop to charge so little.

Plus, I don't have any indication at all how much/where my handle is going to come from. That's probably the biggest factor. If someone charges me $1000 for a handle with the rights to make more (again, I have no indication if that's an accurate price or not), then I have to spread that out among the # of daggers I sell plus the cost of materials for each handle.

This is one of those props where if I could produce it entirely myself, I'd do it for a reasonable price just so I could get them out there. But even if I had my own machine to make these and charged $25/hour on the machine (or less really since I'd have to supply tooling and such myself), and found a really reasonable place to get the handle sculpted, we'd still be looking at that $500 mark. I can't see people wanting to pay more than $300 a piece for these, and that's where the problem lies. The pricepoint these would be at would really knock down the (already few) number of buyers.

There's one guy I can think to contact about sculpting the handle. I'll send him a message right now. He owes me a favor, so we'll see what he says. As soon as I have any news one way or the other, I'll be sure to post it here.

AlexGordon said:

I honestly don't know. It depends how low a shop would be able to get the hours spent on the machine. It took us 18 hours for the first one. While we could definitely get the time down with a few better tools, a production run would also have more details done by the machine itself. The number that keeps popping into my head is $500/ dagger, but I really don't have any evidence to back that up. I'm just pulling that from what I would pay if this was one of my absolute holy grail props. If it takes 18 hours to machine each dagger, I expect the cost would be higher, since that's $27 per hour, and I've never known a shop to charge so little.

Plus, I don't have any indication at all how much/where my handle is going to come from. That's probably the biggest factor. If someone charges me $1000 for a handle with the rights to make more (again, I have no indication if that's an accurate price or not), then I have to spread that out among the # of daggers I sell plus the cost of materials for each handle.

This is one of those props where if I could produce it entirely myself, I'd do it for a reasonable price just so I could get them out there. But even if I had my own machine to make these and charged $25/hour on the machine (or less really since I'd have to supply tooling and such myself), and found a really reasonable place to get the handle sculpted, we'd still be looking at that $500 mark. I can't see people wanting to pay more than $300 a piece for these, and that's where the problem lies. The pricepoint these would be at would really knock down the (already few) number of buyers.

There's one guy I can think to contact about sculpting the handle. I'll send him a message right now. He owes me a favor, so we'll see what he says. As soon as I have any news one way or the other, I'll be sure to post it here.

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Hey, I'm new to this site but I have been hunting for a place to get this prop for months to no avail. I would be willing to pay almost anything for this prop and truly hope that you have been able to find some way of producing the dagger? If not I have been looking into making my own but I was planning to create a mould and then use molten iron to create a more realistic feel to it, I would love to hear your thoughts?

Hello, For that level of work that price is not as bad as you think, i know three people including myself that would pay that price to buy one. Just like TheDuke217 i have been looking for a dagger of this quality since the first season of once upon a time and would love to purchase one. Did you contact the person that would possibly do the handle? If so or if not have you considered making more of these handle or not?

Well, the first problem is, I don't actually have anything to backup the guess of ~500/dagger that I mentioned above, that's just a point that I would have liked to hit. I don't know whether it's actually possible or not based on how long it would take to machine it. I did all that I could to find someone to make this handle, but I just can't keep wasting time emailing various people/places that just ignore me or turn me down (which is better than ignoring me). The problem isn't that I don't want to see this through, because I really do. I'm stockpiling pictures for the current dagger as well (yeah, it's on my list), but I have absolutely zero way to have this handle produced, and zero time to keep hunting down people to do this work for me. I don't really see a need to make just blades, because then everyone I sell a blade to is going to nag me every month or so, asking if I've gotten a handle for mine yet, etc. I'd love to be able to 3d print this handle, I just don't have the time to model the handle using software I'm unfamiliar with, nor the time to track down people who will give me the time of day for the project. This falls into the unfortunate (and small) realm of things I cannot feasibly make myself (feasibly means less than 1000 hours of research/making/modeling/sculpting), and I don't feel the need to spend huge amounts of money on a handle for this to finish my own, so even mine continues to sit here unfinished.

Unless someone comes to me with a perfect handle (or model of a handle), it's not really worth it for me to make more of these. Not enough of the right people are interested in this, and I can't carry the project by myself. There aren't enough hours in the day to contact person after person about this, especially if I may or may not only sell 2-5 of these.

I wish I had better news about this, but in order for me to move forward with this, someone would have to send me a model of a perfect handle to 3d print, and once I verified that it was perfect, I'd happily send them a finished dagger, but I can't keep hunting to find such a person. I have enough dimensions to get someone started on it, but not enough to make a technical drawing of it. Whoever modeled it would have to be experienced enough to use a few limited dimensions and a bunch of reference pictures to get the model done. That's what it would take for the project to move forward anytime soon. If that happened, sure, I might be able to have a few of these put together before christmas. But otherwise, I just don't see it happening.


At the rate things are going, it would be at least a year from now before I *might* have the time to hunt down someone to help finish this project.

Any chance I can get a copy of your artwork for the dagger?

I have a Tormach CNC milling machine at my house, and I need to make a dagger for the daughter of some friends for a convention. I agree the scupture on the handle is daunting, While I can't promise much at this point, I'm willing to put some effort into trying to model some of the handle, and to share my results with you.

Can you please tell me the measures of the dagger?? and what's the height of the blade??

Hi I've been looking for one of these for a while now and can only find woodeon replicas which personally don't look very tastefully I know this is an old post but this is the closest ive come to finding one, you said you're not making any more productions (to be honest I wouldn't be bothered whether it had a handle or not because what you have made is an absolute work of art as it is) how would I go about finding someone to make me one what machine would they need and what would they're skill or trade be? Thank you and again an amazing work of art